Ministry of Innovation —

Yahoo throws its weight behind OpenID single sign-on

Yahoo announced its support for the OpenID authentication standard today. …

The OpenID online authentication standard got a massive boost today. Yahoo has announced it intends to adopt OpenID, and will be offering all current Yahoo account holders the chance to upgrade to OpenID accounts. The company will also adopt sign-in seals—the unique photos displayed at banking web sites and associated with each individual users' account—to help users confirm that they are, in fact, logging into a genuine Yahoo webpage.

The OpenID initiative itself allows people to sign in and access multiple websites with a single username. Unlike certain earlier initiatives such as Microsoft's Passport, however, OpenID does not store all end-user information in a single centralized dataserver. An OpenID user with a Yahoo account, for example, could enter his OpenID (JohnDoe@yahoo.com) at any web site where the authentication standard is supported. JohnDoe would then be redirected to a secure Yahoo server and asked to enter his Yahoo login and password. This process can be completed at as many web sites as the end user wishes.

Yahoo's decision to back OpenID could nearly triple the service's number of users, and could spur current fans of the service to spend more time using Yahoo-branded software and online services. OpenID, however, is not the only game in town. Facebook, Google, and Plaxo recently announced their intentions to work with DataPortability.org in developing ways for end-users to move their own data and identification between various online services. Microsoft, meanwhile, has its own ID system, known as Windows Live ID, that aims to provide much the same service as OpenID under the Microsoft label.

Microsoft will supposedly be collaborating with OpenID on version 2.0 of the standard to integrate support for the standard into Windows Vista, but it's not clear when that will happen, or if the company will decide to change directions and directly support its own Windows Live ID instead. OpenID and the various other similar initiatives like it aren't going to take the Internet by storm—there are too many competitors in the field, and too many valid privacy and security concerns that have yet to be addressed. Yahoo's decision to support the authentication standard is still a significant step in the right direction—the millions of users that pass through Yahoo's portal on a daily basis now have the opportunity to jump through fewer hoops in order to access the content and services they use online.